Timothy Lewis
English
Apr 6, 2021
Thank you Xose for a great conversation. Your English is very good and it was definitely a great catch up.
See you again next week.
Profile
Welcome,
I am a Galician with a quite neutral accent living in Madrid (Spain). I am interested in practising FRENCH, ENGLISH, ITALIAN and PORTUGUESE with native or proficient speakers. I started to learn some basic GERMAN as well.
I consider myself an optimistic and open-minded person. I really appreciate and embrace diversity in all its forms and I adore to talk to real people different to me (especially polyglots).
Learning
French
Portuguese
English
Italian
German
Language Skills
SpanishNative
GalicianNative
Interests
Science
Business & Finance
Tech
Art
Environment & Nature
Lesson Feedback
Lesson history
| Last month | Last 3 months | All time | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Completed lessons | 0 | 1 | 116 |
| Attendance rate | 100% | 75% | 99% |
Teacher reviews
Timothy Lewis
English
Feb 22, 2021
I really enjoyed talking to you today about some history and learning more about your culture and about your daily life. I appreciate you and see you again soon.
Timothy Lewis
English
Feb 13, 2021
It was nice to have another conversation with you after some time. I enjoyed the topics we discussed and it was very easy to understand you. I appreciate you and look forward to our next lesson.
Timothy Lewis
English
Jan 6, 2021
It was a pleasure meeting you today Xose. Your conversation in English was very good. I look forward to bringing you up to an advanced level.
Activities
- Caverna da esperanzaA caverna da esperanza é un lugar moi fermoso. Fun sen moitas expectativas pero cando cheguei namoreime do lugar. Alugamos unha fermosa cabana xunto á caverna. Esta proximidade permitiunos camiñar todos os días ata a cova e facer alí as nosas merendas. Realmente boto de menos aqueles tempos nos que non tiñamos teléfonos móbiles nin Internet. Os días vivíanse máis amodo.Encantaríame que volvésemos a ese lugar en breve. Poderiamos levar a Tadashi e Keiko. Estou segura de que irían adorar.0 votedJune 30, 20200
- At B1-B2 level, I would say that speaking and listening abilities are the most important ones. Many language students are able to manage written language but when it comes to oral expression in an foreign language they show their flaws. Students who are learning to write basic compositions have many resources available (dictionary, online translators, searching up information) but speaking is not as easy. Once you have reached B2, once you passed the purgatory level, you have learned all the gramamar rules of the language and you know nearly all the vocabulary which is used in common conversations.At C1 level, writing becomes more and more important and you need to read a lot of deep literature. The style of the language required for university and business has its own characteristics and elements that set it apart from the colloquial language you might use elsewhere. Believe or not, I met students at prestigious colleges with proficient oral skills that lacked the basic abilities to express themselves in writing. Proficient writing is about structure, coherence and cohesion and, at least for me, it is very difficult to achieve.0 votedJanuary 9, 20180
- Are there any online standardized language exams?Unfortunately it is not easy for me to take a day off in the mid of the week to sit an official examination. Apparently there are some free or cheap tests but they are not proctored. Do you know any affordable online proctored tests with verified identity that can be done from home?January 8, 201830
- Which online translator works best for you? When I first tested online translators it was clear that they were not very good but, truth be said, machine translations are getting more and more accurate. It seems to me that Microsoft Bing translator works slightly better than Google translate, at least from English to Spanish and Portuguese and vice versa.
I use a couple of tricks to get a better automatic translation.If I have some idea of how to say it in English, I try pasting my attempt into the translator to see how it is reverse translated into my native language which may give me some idea about possible misunderstandings. Then I use Linguee or Google to paste parts of my translated text and see how similar phrases are used in a similar context.
Which ones do you use and what is your experience so far?January 8, 201872 - If your pronunciation is reasonably good, whether your accent is British or American you will be understood. You only need to avoid slang and colloquialisms.
Besides, when you say American English you are assuming that it works as a uniform international variety and this is debatable. Does someone from Boston speak like someone from Los Angeles? For me, America is a big continent not a country, and I assume that American English includes Canadian English rightly or wrongly. Canadian English sometimes retains many of the British practices.
Last but not least, I could not consider American English more global than the language I hear on BBC Radio 4, or in Four weddings and a funeral, My fair lady or Bridget Jones's Diary.0 votedJanuary 8, 20180 - I am from Galicia (NW of Spain) and there is very little bullfighting tradition here. I've never been in a corrida, bous al carrer, encierro, novillada or something similar. I am afraid we do not have bullfighting sentiment in many parts of Spain. Corridas were totally unknow in Galicia and Asturias at the end of 18th century and I would say that less than one third of Spaniards follow bullfighting in Spain. Saying that bullfighting is an integral part of Spanish culture is a gross overgeneralization.As for me, I do not eat meat for environmental reasons. Even if I dislike bullfighting, it is difficult for me to buy the moral superiority of people that condemn bullfighting while eating the cheapest industrial beef. Most of low-cost meat in your diets come from farms that are more like animal concentration camps. Indeed, bullfifghting is a cruel outdated bloodsport that cannot continue in our days but, truth be said, the Spanish bull suffers a lot one day, the poor animal does not suffer day after day, year after year, like most of meat-production cows inhabiting overcrowded farms all around the world.0 votedJanuary 8, 20180
- I work for a big company, the environment is very international, English acts as our lingua franca but most of us are non-native English speakers. During a meeting with non-native speakers, everybody can understand each other with a basic but effective level of global English. But when a native English speaker is in the meeting room, people become shy and few dare to vent deep opinions at the risk of making clear our level of English.
In my personal case, my level of English could be a C1 but my speech is not as rich as an anglophone one and, believe me, sometimes I had a difficult time expressing with accuracy my thoughts to natives. My poor Globish is a technical utilitarian language like the language on the Internet or in international commerce, and it is far away from both the flowery sonnets of Shakespeare and the colloquialisms of a Tesco cashier. Do you need help with the packaging? Do you have clubcard vouchers? I needed a month or so to get that.
Fortunately, native English speakers are a minority among my employer and among the world’s population ;-)0 votedJanuary 6, 20180 ¿O que é Brunei?
¡Ola!
Estou en Brunei na casa da miña nai (ela traballa aquí nun centro de investigación). Pouca xente de fóra do sueste asiático sabe o que é Brunei. Brunei é un relativamente pequeno estado que se atopa na illa de Borneo e que ten menos de medio millón de habitantes. En teoría a lingua oficial é o malaio estándar, pero arreo usan o inglés como lingua de prestixio (nos comercios, na educación, entre as varias etnias...). Tamén hai o malaio bruneíno, que é a lingua materna da maioría da poboación, e é moi diferente do malaio estándar (que está baseado nas falas de Sumatra e a Península Malaya). Una sexta parte da poboación é de etnia chinesa, pero eles non teñen a cidadanía bruneína. A parte dos chineses, tamén hai pobos indíxenas (que falan linguas austronésicas, a mesma família á que pertence o malaio) e támiles (sur-indios). O islam é a relixión estatal, e practicamente todos os malaios étnicos son musulmanes, polo menos dacordo coa lei, porque a apostasía é ilegal. Entre os que pertencen ás minorías étnicas tamén hai xente que practica o cristianismo, o budismo ou o animismo indíxena de Borneo.
A capital de Brunei é Bandar Seri Begawan, que ten una etimoloxía moi interesante. "Bhagwaan" significa "Deus" en sánscrito, e "sri" quere dicir "señor". A palabra "bandar", en cambio, ven do persa, lingua en que quere decir "porto". Hoxendía, a diferenza do significado en persa, en malaio moderno "bandar" quere dicir "cidade" (é un cambio moi lóxico, xa que os malayos sempre foran un pobo mariñeiro e comerciante, polo que conseguiron expandirse á costa de Borneo). É dicir, o nome da capital significa "Cidade Señor Deus" ou "Porto Señor Deus".
Brunei é un país moi rico, principalmente polas suas enormes reservas de petroleo e gas natural. O noventa por cento da economía está na industria petroleira e de gas. Importan a maior parte da comida doutros países do sueste asiático. En Brunei o crecemento do PIB é negativo (é dicir, baixa), porque a economía non está diversificada e a industria petroleira e gaseira debilítase. O estándar de vida é alto e o estado de benestar é forte (polo menos para os malaios étnicos), pero non sei se iso poderá manterse de maneira estable se chegar un colapso da industria petroleira.0 votedSeptember 11, 20171
00:00
00:00